Hey Guys! I added an unforeseen intermission to my trip out West and am now back in Cleveland for the next few weeks. Some personal stuff came up back home that I had to attend to, and additionally, I was beginning to feel slightly burned out (mostly due to lack of sleep). I didn’t want to go into the WSOP feeling like I was, so decided it would be best to fly back home for a couple of weeks to get some much needed sleep, be with my family and girlfriend, and really get on the tournament study grind. I was also getting really home sick from the lovely Jack Casino (sarcasm :P)

That said, I definitely was getting a bit sick of spending the majority of my time at the Bellagio in Vegas. While the games are great, the service there is pretty horrific. First off, the majority of dealers are clearly miserable, and as a result, give off a lot of attitude at the table. What’s even worse than the dealers, however, are the waitresses. I had one incident that occurred after my dinner had been delivered to the table. I’m someone who generally needs a beverage to go with my meals, so I tried flagging down one of the waitresses so I could get some water before eating. “Miss?!” I called out. No response, so I tried again. This time she snaps her heads up, and in a rude, condescending voice says something like, “Listen, I’m not taking orders right now. You’re going to need to wait until I come back around.” I said okay, and thought to myself that she must be having a bad day, and went on playing, patiently waiting for her to come back. 20 minutes went by and I still hadn’t seen her or another waitress anywhere in the poker room. I was beginning to get antsy. Finally, a different waitress appears on the other side of the room. I approached her and politely asked if I could grab a water off her tray (WITH A TIP IN HAND). She snapped back at me, “No! We’re not allowed to give away waters to people outside of our sections.” I looked at her, confused, and explained my case. She clearly wasn’t budging however, so I decided it was time to look for water outside the poker room.

I was hanging out near the Sportsbook, hoping to come across a non-poker room waitress, when the one I had just spoken to came up to me and said something like, “You’re not allowed to just wander into the poker room and try to snag some free water, ya’know. If you try something like this again I’m going to call security.” I was pretty taken back at this. I kind of just laughed and explained that I was in fact actually playing and was just having trouble getting my hands on some water. She didn’t seem to understand, however, and ended up storming off, clearly upset at me for basically no reason.

The kicker in my experience at the Bellagio was an incident I had with security. I’d been running well in my session on this day and had managed to accumulate 12 black $100 chips. I’d been conversing with a woman on my right quite a bit when I realized that I now only had 10 black chips. Additionally, the player on my left now had a stack of seven or eight blacks, which I couldn’t recall him winning. I will say that I was a bit sleep deprived at the time, so it is possible that I just miscounted initially and everything was totally fine. Still, wanting to be safe rather than sorry, I decided it was best to bring this to the floor’s attention. I filled out a complaint with security and was told that they would check the film and would likely have an update for me later that night. I didn’t hear back from anyone, so decided I would just check back myself the following day.

I showed up at the front desk the next morning and explained what had happened. I was directed to the back desk outside of Bobby’s Room and was told I needed to call lost and found in order to get an update. They dialed them up for me at the desk, and I stood there for probably 20 minutes on hold. Fortunately, David Benyamine and a bunch of high stakes sickos were playing some $300-600 Mix so I was able to sweat the action a bit without coming off as some kind of creep. After a while, a floor person came over and I explained that I’d been on hold for a while. He looked at the phone and seemed confused. “There’s nobody on the other line,” he said to me. The motherfuckers had hung up on me. I was pretty tilted at this point, and complained to the floor person that this was ridiculous and that they should be taking care of this for me. He said he was sorry and that it was the responsibility of the player and that I should just go to the lost and found myself so I could talk to someone in person. After wandering around for a while, I finally managed to locate it and was greeted by a security guard at the front. There was a phone outside the office, and he instructed me to pick it up and told me I’d be connected to the people I needed to talk to. I explained that I’d already been hung up on while trying to connect with them and that I’d rather just talk to someone in person. That wasn’t going to happen, unfortunately, as he explained the only way for me to get an update was to get on the phone. I tiltingly picked it up and was immediately put on hold for another 10-15 minutes. Finally, I got a human on the phone. I told him everything that had happened, gave him my case number, and politely asked for an update on my case. “Uhhh… yea. We’re not allowed to discuss any cases. All I can say is that the investigation is ongoing and you’re free to contact us in the upcoming days for an update.” I was pretty pissed off at this point. I’d spent close to an hour trying to figure this out and basically got nowhere. I asked him if they could just look at the film and check to see whether any chips had been stolen. “All I can say is the investigation is ongoing,” he replied. I sarcastically thanked him for all his help and hung up.

So… yea. I guess the moral of the story is don’t play at the Bellagio if you don’t have to. Fortunately for me, as bad as I ran off the felt I was able to run pretty well in game to the point where I now feel I’m well rolled enough for some deeper stacked 2-5 NL as opposed to the Bellagio’s $500 cap game. Hopefully I won’t have to return to there when I venture back out west in a few weeks. That’s all I’ve got for now. Sorry for the lack of strategy this week, just felt like I needed to rant a bit about this shitty experience of mine and didn’t really have any interesting hands to talk about anyway. Be sure to check out my WSOP package on TastyStakes here if you haven’t already. I’m almost sold out, so if you’re looking to get in on the action be sure to do so soon. Thanks for reading!